Your Unrealized Love for Blind Melon

A few years back I played in a cover band. We changed our name for each song we played and played live a couple times. It was really stupid fun and as much as people can rag on covers, learning other people’s songs is vital to growth as a musician. I know a decent number of people who never learn others’ songs. This seems shortsighted to me.

Anyway, I also just found video of one of the last Blind Melon shows ever. I know this because Shannon Hoon died (10/21/95) less than a month after this show was played (9/27/95). They kicked off their set with “2×4”, a song we covered in that band with shifting names. One of the most remarkable aspects of this song is how smoothly they transition between common time, 3/4 and, briefly, 5/8. Yep, the Melon mathed it up.

It often seems like people heard “No Rain”, watched the Bee-Girl video and wrote them off entirely. Firstly, that’s not a bad song regardless of how overplayed it was at the time. Secondly, pretty much every other song of theirs was really good if not entirely, completely awesome. I will defend Blind Melon until I die. They were awesome.